The Denver Public Library's trippy tribute to the Booklovers' Ball

The creative team over at the Denver Public Library's central branch has occasionally released peculiar videos starring some nameless but game staffer trapped in a giant white kitty suit to promote upcoming events and programs. But the latest entry in this bizarre oeuvre de cinema, a shameless but mildly subversive plug for the October 18 Booklovers' Ball (click here for the details) deserves special mention.

This time the cat, evidently a working-class feline consigned by a ruthless caste system to endless shelving duties, appears to suffer a head injury, leading to a psychotic break and subsequent hallucinations that evoke the acute tensions of repressed sexuality found in Victorian fantasy literature. There's some fairy dust, a visit from characters out of Peter Pan, a prim yet sinister dance number — and a crashing return to the authoritarian modern state, embodied in a library security guard. In this nightmare world, books are blunt weapons and well-dressed hedonists party the night away. Not since the Bunuel-Dali collaboration that generated Un Chien Andalou has the Dadaist instinct violated bourgeois imagery with such gusto.

In other words, it's plain goofy. Two words for the auteurs at DPL: more, please. See the video below. -- Alan Prendergast